Sunday, November 4, 2012

Bones Brigade: An Autobioghraphy (NR)

8 p.m. doors; 9 p.m. screening

Minor with parent or guardian

$8 per person

Bones Brigade: An Autobioghraphy (NR)

It's not a death metal band, an extreme diet club or
historic dominoes association – the Bones
Brigade was a talented gang of teenage outcasts. Unmotivated by fame or
popularity, they completely dedicated their lives to a disrespected art form.
For most of the 1980s, this misfit crew headed by a 1970s ex-skateboard
champion blasted the industry with a mixture of art and raw talent becoming the
most popular skateboarding team in history. The core unit of the Bones Brigade
built an empire that covered the world. They dominated contests, made hundreds
of thousands of dollars, created the modern skateboard video, reinvented
endemic advertising, pushed skate progression into a new era, and set the stage
for a totally new form of skating called street style. There's nothing
comparable in today's skateboarding.

In
1978, a
mechanical engineer who had developed new skateboard products teamed up with
one of the most popular skaters of the era. George Powell and Stacy Peralta
created Powell Peralta and immediately began retooling how skateboard products
were made and marketed.

George, who had started developing products in his garage
and kitchen oven, went on to invent innovative equipment such as double radial
Bones wheels, named for their unique whiteness, and trend setting skateboard
decks. Stacy recruited the skaters and handled marketing along with his
longtime creative cohort Craig Stecyk III.
Rejecting the expected action shot marketing, they used their young team
to create esoteric images conveying the culture's sarcasm and disenfranchised
dark humor. While spitballing about his stable of skaters, Stacy commented that
he never wanted to call them a “team,” a label that invited all kinds
of jock baggage. Craig shrugged and simply said, “Bones Brigade.”

Powell
Peralta reinterpreted a military motif, warping it with pioneering skateboard
graphics more suited to biker gang tats than decks. As great a skater as Stacy
was, his scouting skills surpassed any celebrated onboard skills. By 1984, Tony
Hawk, Rodney Mullen, Steve Caballero, Lance Mountain, Tommy Guerrero and Mike
McGill compiled the most competitively dominant skateboard team in history. On
top of winning large, cheap plastic trophies, Tony Hawk and Rodney Mullen – two 13-year-olds initially ridiculed by their peers – created new ways to skate and pioneered modern technical
skating.

Disgruntled at the way the skate mags played favorites,
Stacy weaponized consumer VCRs by directing the Bones Brigade Video Show in 1983. The low-budget amateur skateboard
video was the first of its kind and sold a surprising 30,000 copies (including
Betamax!).

At the time, skating needed all the help it could get. The
1970s “fad” that swept the country after the invention of the
urethane wheel had deflated embarrassingly by 1981. Remaining participants’
social status ranked below the chess club. Powell Peralta averaged an anemic
500 monthly board sales and Tony Hawk once received a royalty check for 85¢. To increase brand awareness and grow skateboarding, Stacy
produced and created a new Bones Brigade video every year, showcasing his
crew's varied personalities and invented maneuvers. The videos routinely
featured riders crawling out of sewers, skating abandoned pools and back
alleys, bombing desolate hills – essentially shredded an
apocalyptic world hidden to most non-skaters.

By the mid-’80s, Brigade videos were sold all over the
world and a new generation of teens discovered skating, making the Brigade
international stars. The dearth of skateparks forced enthusiasts to DIY it,
triggering a wooden ramp revolution. Endemic brands had started their own
magazines and for the first time skaters controlled every aspect of
skateboarding. Powell Peralta peaked in 1987 with $27 million in annual sales
while its pro team continued to dominate contests, cash $20,000 monthly royalty
checks, tour the world, occasionally cause riots and star in the ambitious The Search for Animal Chin, which
remains the most successful skateboard video of all time.

But the activity’s cyclical nature reaffirmed itself by the
end of the decade and skateboarding descended back to the faded fad
category. The industry broke apart as
zeros dropped off checks and most top pros drifted away in search of second
jobs. Powell Peralta dissolved over the owners' business differences and Stacy
left to pursue filmmaking in Hollywood. Almost all the core Brigade members split
and started their own skateboard brands just like their mentor had in 1978.
George regrouped and continued making skate products under the Powell and Bones
banner.

Twenty years on, the Brigade all remain in skateboarding.
Although they've succeeded in separate endeavors, they continue to be bonded
together as veterans of a culture war. Tony Hawk, Rodney Mullen, Lance Mountain
and Steve Caballero remain skate stars while Tommy Guerrero runs a skate brand
and Mike McGill owns and operates one of the most successful independent skate
shops in the country. In 2001, Stacy returned to skateboarding with his
award-winning documentary Dogtown and Z
Boys.